I like ‘Top Gear’, it’s a good laugh, Jeremy Clarkson and Co. are fun, even though I know very little about cars and don’t really care much about cars. I suspect that some of the comments Clarkson and Co make about cars are opinionated BS, but I can never be sure, and I usually don’t care anyway. However, I recently saw a repeat of the episode where they run a race from Turin to London between a Bugatti Veryon and a Cessna 182, and I knew there was no way any car can beat a plane over that distance. The great thing about the internet is that it is very easy for a geek with a hunch to run down some facts, which I did, and I’m now fairly sure I am right. In the programme, Clarkson made it to London in the Bugatti just moments before Hammond and May got there flying – I think that is a crock, and I can show you why.
Clarkson took great pleasure in explaining how the Veryon, which costs almost £600,000, is a 1,000 horsepower beast powered by a W-16 engine – that a pair of V-8’s to you and me. It does 0 to 60 in under 3 seconds, which is fine if you can find a road on which you can use even a fraction of that power. We never got exact timings on the programme, but we know it took him 13 hours to drive from Turin to pick up the train for the Channel Tunnel which is pretty remarkable – I don’t think I could drive for 13 hours. However, it is only about 450 miles, and at 60 mph that is less than 8 hours so Clarkson had plenty of time for coffee breaks. Since the top speed for the Bugatti is 200 and lots miles per hour, it looks like he didn’t exactly risk burning out those 16 cylinders.
Now the Cessna 182, the Skylane, had a variety of different engines depending on the model but was originally built with a Lycoming rated at 230 horsepower – less than a quarter of the Veryon’s power, and a max speed of 150 knots. James May and Ritchie Hammond, in the Cessna, had to dog leg south from Turin to avoid flying over the Alps. Using a Google Map Hack called the Gmaps pedometer, I rough that out at a flight distance of 767 miles. Now the Cessna 182 has a range of about 930 knots, which is 1070 miles. Even allowing for the fairly minimal extra weigh of the Hamster, the 182 should have done the trip with a comfortable safe margin of fuel left over. Without pushing it, the 182 could get from Turin to somewhere near London in under 6 hours. That would have put May and Hammond back in London with time to spare while Clarkson was still meandering across France in the Veryon.
In the programme, they used several tricks to slow the Cessna 182. Clarkson left Turin with his cargo of truffles while May and Hammond had to use vespas to get to the airport. There, May did a full pre-flight, which was sensible, but landed in the south of France to refuel, which wasn’t really needed. Then, the fliers had to land at Lille, which was as far as they had got by sunset, because May wasn’t certified to fly the 182 on instruments. How is it a fair contest between a car and a plane if the pilot isn’t certified for instrument flight? Mind you, setting off on a 700 miles cross country trip with a pilot who is only certified for visual flight is a bit rash – that is the sort of thing that leads to comments about ‘inexperienced pilots’ and ‘pilot error’ in accident reports. May and Hammond had to abandon the 182 in Lille, and dash off to catch the Eurostar to complete the trip.
I ‘ve never flown a 182 (I’ve been in the smaller 172). They were very popular, with over 19,000 built, but I wouldn’t buy one since I like planes with more than 1 engine, even though you can buy between 3 and 5 used Cessna 182’s for the price of one Veryon. I am very sure though that in a fair contest, a 182 with a fully certified pilot will whip any supercar over a 700 mile distance. What is remarkable is that the Cessna 182 first flew in 1956 and is still in production in 2007 (list price $349,500, still cheaper than the Veryon). It would be interesting to know how much petrol the Veryon used between Turin and London – the Veryon is listed at an average of 11.2 mpg, but falls back to 2.1 mpg at top speed. Turin to London is 550 miles at 11 mpg is just under 50 gallons, compared to the 182’s fuel load of 87 gallons.
According to World Auto Report, describing a face off between the Bugatti and a Eurofighter Typhoon last month, Top Gear said “.. the finest piece of automotive engineering in history versus a clattery Cessna 182 was only ever going to end one way.” Indeed. It is a pity they didn’t run a fair race.
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